The Minister's Letter - Dec 2009 & Jan 2010
The Minister's Letter -
Dec 2009 & Jan 2010
Dear friends,
From the end of October people have been
preparing for Christmas, shops have been stocking up with everything you could
possibly need for this season which we know is heavily commercialised. The good
thing about Christmas is that at least people realise it is Christmas and we
have a platform to tell the world about the baby Jesus. The bad side to
Christmas being over commercialised is that for the shops it’s about making
the most money, and not about Jesus. We need to assist people to see that Jesus
came into the world to save and help everyone.
A year or two ago I was watching an outtake
television programme, telling viewers about disasters people had at Christmas.
There was a family where the wife asked if she could have a microwave-oven for
Christmas. So as she was normally the cook they granted her wish. The woman was
the kind of person who wanted to do everything herself with no help.
People kept on asking and she would tell them she was fine.
It came to Christmas Day when she was going to
try out her brand, spanking new microwave-oven. She decided that she was going
to cook the Christmas Pudding in it. So she read the instructions on the
pack…(bearing in mind people were prepared to help etc) and it said the
pudding would take three minutes…so she thought to herself that it would take
longer than that, so she served up the Christmas dinner (single-handedly) and
put the pudding in the for 30 minutes. While the family sat at the table they
kept asking if the pudding was alright as it smelt as though it was burning.
It got to 30 minutes and there was a huge explosion in the kitchen –
everyone rushed out to the kitchen to see that the microwave-oven had exploded
and there would be no Christmas Pudding as it was all over the kitchen!
People kept offering help and it was refused it.
As we go through Advent I am wondering how many people God offers to help, and
those people either refuse his help or ignore him.
God decided to send his son into the world to HELP us. This help was to
show us that God loves us and will forgive us all our sin and evil IF we turn to
him. We need to respond to his help, we don’t need to wait until we have a
crisis in our lives to know his helping hands upon our lives.
One of the areas in our lives I believe that we
need help with is Listening to God. If you pray to God, do you make time to
listen as well? The urgency of listening is illustrated by the fact every human
normally has one mouth and two ears, and this represents the fact that we are
supposed to listen twice the amount of time than we speak.
‘Jesus’, we are told in John’s gospel is the ‘Word become flesh
living amongst us full of grace and truth’. So the question is when do we take
time to listen to him?
From the Bible we notice that God spoke in many
ways, not always in the same way. When God speaks his word is put into action.
In 2009 how many things have we promised
and have failed to do? When God speaks his words are put into practice.
When we hear and respond to God’s word, we are responding to God who is full
of grace and truth, as the parable says we are building on rocks, firm
foundations not on sinking sand. This
Christmas let us promise to serve Jesus for the rest of our lives, knowing we
are listeners to God’s words and live by them.
Jesus once said ‘HEAVEN AND EARTH WILL PASS AWAY, BUT MY WORD WILL
STAND FOREVER’. God’s word is forever, whatever situation we find ourselves
in this Christmas, may find that he is in us and will stand by us so that we
need not fear. Jesus said “Fear not, for I have overcome the world”.
Immanuel God is with us. Call
out to Jesus so he can help you in your time of need…now and in 2010. We wish
you all a very happy Christmas and joyous New Year.
From Gary Hoare
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